Teaching About Class in a Post-DEI Era (opinion)

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When I taught about social class in my Intimacy, Marriages and Families course this past semester, I began with reflection and a sticky note, not with a lecture or statistics.

This wasn’t the first time I used sticky-note prompts in class. Earlier in the semester, I introduced a similar activity during our unit on race, ethnicity and immigration. That experience inspired me: It showed how a simple sentence starter could help students unpack the emotional weight of identity, belonging and difference. It also helped me refine how to frame and facilitate the conversation in a more impactful way.

So when we arrived at the unit on families and social class, I returned to the sticky notes—this time with more complexity of prompts. And what followed was one